Peshawar Development Authority petitions SC to halt BRT probe

The Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) on Tuesday filed a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking the dismissal of Peshawar High Court's  December 6 directives to the Federal Investigation Agency to complete its probe into the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) within 45 days. 

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government spokesperson Ajmal Wazir defended the decision to go to court regarding the probe, saying that the provincial administration would answer all questions regarding the Peshawar BRT once the project had been completed. 

"We are ready for an inquiry into the BRT, but the inquiry should be carried out once the project has been completed," he said after a meeting of the provincial cabinet in Peshawar earlier today. 

"The work on the project had been halted due to elections, but has [since] resumed," he added.

PHC orders completion of inquiry

A bench of the Peshawar High Court, headed by Chief Justice PHC Waqar Ahmad Seth, had earlier this month directed the FIA to complete the probe into the under-construction BRT project within 45 days. 

The bench gave the order while adjudicating a slew of petitions filed against the project by residents of the city. In the order, the court also asked the FIA to take action against the officers involved with the project before the expiry of the 45-day deadline.

Work on the 27-kilometer BRT began in 2017, under the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government. The project envisioned to provide a public transportation corridor, running east to west, to the city of nearly 2 million.

The PTI administration had insisted that the BRT would be completed in six months at low cost. However, to date, the project is still ongoing, during which time its deadline of completion have been revised several times.

The cost of the transport corridor was also increased from Rs49.453 billion in 2017 to Rs66.437 billion in 2018, of which Rs53.320 was taken in the form of a loan from the ADB.